What is recorded here

Mountain air still moves through the broken chamber where two bodies lay heads south, waiting to be remembered. Graves opened the tomb in 1851 and found immense eastern stones, displaced roof flags, and a smaller cist holding cremated bone beside zig-zag pottery. The dead may have belonged to the hillfort above or to an older line of burying on high ground. Either way, the summit kept them clear of forgetting.

On the summit of Mount Garret hill (349m), at the centre of a hillfort (KK008-124001-). It consists of a ruined cairn (diam. c. 25m; H 1-2m). Six kerb-stones are exposed along the W side. The monument was investigated by Graves in 1851 and was found to contain a central chamber (L c. 2m; Wth 1.35m; D 1m) (Graves 1849-51, vol. 1, 289-92). Its E side was formed of four 'immense stones, averaging six feet long [1.83m], and from two feet six to three feet wide [0.76-0.91m], piled one on the other'. The W side was of similar construction and was formed of five slabs. The S end was closed by a large slab set on edge. The N extremity was built up with smaller stones 'without any order or regularity'. It appears to have been roofed by two flags 'each about five feet long [1.52m], and between three and four feet wide [0.9m-1.22m]' which were displaced and lay in the chamber. The fill of the chamber contained two adult human skeletons, apparently extended; their heads lay to the S. Some 2m S of this chamber and on a much higher level in the cairn was a small cist. In it were found cremated bone and sherds of pottery with 'indented herring-bone or zig-zag pattern', probably from an urn or food vessel (ibid.). Both the cist and S end stone of the central chamber are still visible. Ryan (1981, 144) has suggested that this monument may be a probable Linkardstown-type burial. The occurrence of a central megalithic chamber in a kerbed, round cairn together with the hilltop siting of the monument, however, could indicate links with the passage-tomb tradition. Compiled by: Paul Walsh Date of upload: 23 January 2018

Passage tomb, dating to the Neolithic period (c. 3500–2500 BCE), associated with an early ceremonial and funerary landscape in south-eastern Ireland. Its location within a hillfort highlights its potential significance in both ritual and later defensive contexts.

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